Previous research on aging and memory has typically demonstrated that performance on memory tasks tends to decrease with increasing chronological age after a peak in early adulthood. However, this work has been based almost exclusively on episodic memory tasks which require the exact reproduction of input. On the other hand, there is almost no research which examines age/cohort differences in semantic memory involving comprehension, integration, and memory for the gist of the input. The proposed research is designed to investigate adult age/cohort differences in comprehension and semantic memory for meaningful text materials from a contextual perspective. More specifically, the proposed research is designed to examine these processes as a function of the context defined by the macrostructure and micro-structure of the text, goals of the task, and knowledge schema, intellectual abilities and personality states of the reader. A set of eight experiments involving 255 participants from each of three age/cohort groups (20-39 years, 1939-1958; 40-49 years, 1919-1938; 60-79 years, 1899-1918) are planned over a three year period from April, 1978-March, 1981. The separate experiments are designed to investigate the role of the variables noted above. The proposed research will provide a contrast to previous work based on associative or information processing views of learning and memory. In particular, the proposed research should begin to lay the groundwork for an understanding of how adults and the aged process meaningful material. Such understanding is crucial to an ecologically valid description and explanation of adult development across the life span.